P.S. My Butt Broke the Plane

Sweet Home Alabama. That is where I am tonight. Is the sky oh so blue? It is. Is the sky oh so hot? YES IT IS. I was standing outside at 8 o'clock at night in a t-shirt and I was sweating bullets. When you move away from the South, you forget how truly hot is is. Like oppressively hot, like strip off all your clothes and run naked down the highway hot. And I thought I knew hot because I don't have as much as a window air conditioner unit in California.  But turns out our duplex in the hot summer months is like Antarctica compared to Alabama. By the way, thank goodness for central air at my mom's house. I bow down to central air. I kiss the ground the air conditioner walks on.

My first morning flight was pretty eventless, followed by a short layover in Dallas. I was sitting at my gate, when one of the gate ladies (what the heck is the proper occupational title for the people at the gate? Maybe dream squashers or party poopers since they are always giving the bad news. Just kidding gate people.) made an announcement. The flight to Newark, which was next to us, was being scrubbed due to mechanical problems. I thought oh thank goodness that is not our flight. You know because I had Mexican food and Margaritas to get home to! So we boarded the flight and I was getting settled in when the pilot announced they had found an unfixable, mechanical error so they were not going to use this plane. So we would have to exit, and wait while they found us a new plane. See this was my punishment for even being relieved for one second that the fate of the flight to Newark was not my fate.

Honestly, getting kicked off the flight was annoying, but I would much rather be delayed than be up in the air on an unsafe flight. I called Adam to tell him what was going on and told him quote, "My Gigantic Butt Broke the Plane." The size of my butt is a running joke between us. Because my butt is big and it is absolutely fabulous. So Adam and I had fun with that running gag for a while.

So the passengers on flight 1008 waited and waited, and the funny thing is before the first flight boarded no one spoke to each other, but slowly like prisoners of a shared, sucky experience we all started to bond. Swapping horror stories from flying in the past and telling jokes. Then, finally like Manna from heaven the gate ladies a.k.a dream squashers and party poopers announced that they had found us a plane and we must migrate to gate D15.  But there was some confusion over whether she had said B or D. So we hedged our bets on D, and like ducks we rode the escalator in one neat, little row. We took up one whole sky link train before collectively hooping and hollering over our celebration over picking the correct gate.

Of course, we still had to wait at the gate, and of course the gate was right next to a candy store. Which was impossible for me to resist because I was famished. I wanted to save money and calories. But the fates didn't have that in the cards for me, so I chowed down on coconut haystacks and almond bark. Which just happens to be my mother's two favorite candies in the world. So when we were having dinner and I was recounting their deliciousness,  I suddenly became evil in my mother's eyes for not buying her any.  For two reasons-1. She lent me the money to travel with (meaning that is how I bought the chocolates) and 2. How could I not think to buy my long suffering mother who was in labor with me for nearly three days before having to succumb to a scarring c-section some gosh-darn candy y'all? An act that could have obviously been forgiven if I had just brought her one haystack.

Honestly, it never even crossed my mind to buy her any. LOL. I'm a bad daughter. So I have been reminding her all evening about the amazing, deliciousness of the haystacks. And how no other candy ever will compare to those haystacks! Ever. I mean it. Don't you wish you had tasted them Mom?

In fact, I think I will get some more haystacks on the way home to California. Maybe buy some candy to give to Adam, and rub that in her face a little more. Yep, my mother loves me. In other words, I'm already having a blast.

P.S.-My butt didn't break the second plane.